Liz Rowan vowed to fight. And fight, she did.
In the last five years, the 21-year-old Vancouver woman received five cancer diagnoses. She endured dozens of surgeries, countless rounds of chemotherapy, bone grafts, blood transfusions, a bilateral mastectomy, a bone marrow transplant and breast reconstruction.
She defeated bone cancer in her jaw at age 16 and two types of breast cancer at age 19. But the latest battle — in which she faced leukemia, twice — was too much.
Rowan died Thursday from complications related to her cancer treatment.
Rowan was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in April. She immediately began chemotherapy treatments and received a bone marrow transplant in September. On Oct. 31, the family learned Rowan’s leukemia had returned. To make matters worse, Rowan had also developed a second form of leukemia.
“This last relapse had been really hard to accept,” Rowan wrote on her blog on Nov. 19. “I can throw around the idea fighting it 5 times but six has me scared. There is only so much fight a person can have and it’s hard on my family too. I will fight cancer until it kills me literally.”
